Summary
Greenland‘s remarkable combination of downright dullness and eye-rolling coincidences make for, frankly, a boring experience.
Listen, I love a good Gerard Butler action picture like any other red-blooded male. His movie choices remind me of a young Nicolas Cage, honestly. They range from the Fallen series to such off the wall choices as P.S. I Love You, Chasing Mavericks, and the 90s revenge throwback Law Abiding Citizen. He takes what he wants, he beats the bad guy, takes no prisoners, and if doesn’t get the girl, he sure as hell avenges her. Yet, in Greenland, almost all the burly charm has left, leaving behind a lifeless script.
Don’t get me wrong, there are much worse movies than Greenland. You would just never expect a Butler film to be so stagnant. I mean, maybe bad, but always entertaining. Chris Sparking’s script’s remarkable combination of downright dullness and eye-rolling coincidences make for, frankly, a boring experience. That, and the fact that any opportunity to use even the smallest themes of classism, socioeconomic issues, and ethical dilemmas are nowhere to be found. They could have at least helped build any type of suspense, but it was missed. There was more suspense built into Buried, which he wrote, and that had Ryan Reynolds laying inside a small, wooden box for 90 minutes.
There is not much plot to go over here. Butler plays John Garrity, a structural engineer who, along with his wife Allison (Morena Baccarin) and son Nathan (Roger Dale Floyd), are selected to be saved from the earth-ending asteroid. They get derailed, of course, along the way. They run into your typical villains, white nationalists to religious zealots. Small meteorites fall from the sky with remarkable accuracy and start to pick people off as if they had been shot from a sniper rifle. I don’t know about you, but if I get separated from my group at a decent size concert or festival, I won’t find them until we meet at the car. The Garrity family clan get separated multiple times, yet all come back together and have an amazing amount of free will walking between military-enforced watchpoints. It’s eye-roll and yawn-inducing.
Like Tenet, there has been so much hype over Greenland. It has been delayed because of the current pandemic at least a half-dozen times. Maybe Ric Roman Waugh’s (Angel Has Fallen) latest is a victim of rising expectations. Although, it will be very hard for anyone to say this has any escapism quality worth your time. You’re better off going with another Butler film or going with a 100 hundred other films in HBO Max’s massive film library.
